From Bankruptcy to Empire: Aaron Gaynor's $60 Million Journey in the Trades

In our latest episode, we discuss Aaron Gaynor's experience of overcoming a significant setback. After facing bankruptcy, Aaron built a successful business worth $60 million. He shares his journey and offers advice for overcoming challenges. His story includes his evolution from a beginner plumber to a successful business leader, highlighting his strategies for resilience and success.

Aaron restructured his business strategy after bankruptcy, focusing on the plumbing and HVAC industries and incorporating innovative approaches. The episode explores how to expand services while maintaining quality, effective rebranding, and the utilization of AI in business operations. It presents a detailed analysis of how to adapt to a changing market.

The episode concludes by emphasizing the potential within the trade industry. Aaron's experience illustrates how personal and professional growth can emerge from challenging circumstances. The discussion aims to give listeners a deeper understanding of the trade industry and potentially inspire their professional development. Join us to hear more about Aaron's insights and approach to overcoming obstacles and achieving success.

http://www.ecoplumbers.com

http://linkedin.com/in/aaron-gaynor-9b1a7b16

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:56

Welcome to the successful life podcast. I'm your host, corey Baylor. I'm here with my man, aaron Gaynor. What's up, aaron? What's up, man, how you doing today? Good man, excited to be here. I'm excited to have this conversation with you. I've heard your name throughout come out of a lot of people's mouth and I really know a ton about you. To be honest with you, I did cheat a little bit and I listened to your interview with Brian Burton, who is a good friend of mine, and really enjoyed it. Some of this may be a little bit repetitive, because I really want to know well first, why don't you introduce yourself really quick and then we'll get into it?

Speaker 2: 1:40

Yeah for somebody listeners that haven't heard or don't know much about me, I'm a plumber by trade. I started trading in 1997, straight out of high school. When I say that, I was loading semi trucks at night and then found a job, a first shift job. A buddy of mine called me up and said, hey, this guy I know his brother-in-law at the time said, hey, want some young guys in the trades, Just construction. First shift job and it was $7.50 an hour and I was loading semi trucks at Valley City. Second shift throughout my senior year high school and then took the job and never left, got into the trades, learned the trade. It came quick to me. I felt like I got it quick. I learned it quick, love the construction, love being outside working, love that aspect of it.

Speaker 2: 2:30

Got my plumbing license master plumbing license around the age of 23 years old and then, like most people that think they know how to do the job really well, the e-meth story, which many people may be aware of, is that I started a construction plumbing business because we felt like we could do the business better than our boss. That's how it works and I grew that business to around $3.5 million 06, 07, lost that business to a bankruptcy. Obviously we all know about the market and what happened but at the same time didn't really know how to run a business. Just thought construction would go on forever and wasn't really a business mind person At that time, just new, operational, kind of struck how to put it in, what to do right, and didn't really own a business, really Just had a tax ID and was good as the builders that we work for. So lost that business went bankrupt, lost my, lost people's jobs, lost my house, lost my car. I went on down into check systems at this point Like it was owed money to taxes and stuff. Right, just as you go through that, if anybody has, it's not a fun place to be.

Speaker 2: 3:36

Ended up back at my mom's house, 28 years old, sleeping on the couch, killed dad three-year-old and decided, told him one night, let him there, egg man, this ain't going to be our lives. Like I promise you this ain't going to be the life. And just looking up at him, at three-year-old and his Spider-Man pajamas and just thinking like I got to do something and got to work. And here we are coming up on 17 years later borrow $50, open up a bank account. Got my sister to help me out. Bronn, one of my friends I've known from high school, worked with me and got involved and has been here growing that and many other people that we might talk about today. A little bit supporting that Got to work from $50, open up the bank account to $60 million.

Speaker 2: 4:19

So it's not most people Go ahead, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 4:21

I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to interrupt, no, I just no.

Speaker 2: 4:28

I said that's the, that I could get a little delay there. I said that's the quick of the story, just to give you a little background.

Speaker 1: 4:34

So this is not most people's story, right, most people get to the place that you got to with your son the night with your son and it's really hard to overcome the amount of shit you had to wade through in order to get just hell and just into positive right, just to. I mean, I can only imagine and look, I've lost businesses. I burnt one straight to the ground and I but I didn't lose a bunch of people's jobs. I didn't have that pressure on me. It was really I was more thinking about me than I was anything else and I was just being honest with you.

Speaker 1: 5:15

But the amount of pressure that must have been on you, like what do you think the shift was from just constant getting kicked in the nuts it's what it sounds like, and maybe it wasn't. I don't mean that you're a victim, I just mean made some, made some bad choices, obviously made some bad choices. If you went to bankruptcy, right, you don't usually get that. I made good choices, for sure, and look, we've all made bad choices. But what do you think the shift was from feeling like you just have been beat down to you had to have felt beat down?

Speaker 2: 5:55

Yeah, I think everybody, I think, if anybody comes on ever says, oh, I never felt like giving up, or I never felt like beat up or lost, like I would say the odds of that are probably pretty low and I would say nobody. But everybody goes through some point in that in their life, I think. And then you just use that as a moment to reflect and say I'm I and I use it, for I use when those thoughts come to me and did stuff as energy to fight against them, right. So, yeah, of course I mean went through a lot of times or just like man, what am I going to do here? What am I going to do? I'm sitting there feeling that, but in my heart for some reason, like I could have got another job. I'm like I was a good planner, I had a good stood plumbing I mean people would have gave me a job doing plumbing for sure. But just something inside me was like I want to do more. I don't want to just do that, and there's nothing wrong with doing that. It just wasn't my view of myself, right, my vision of myself in my head, like I just felt like I wanted to be this person doing X and I needed to figure it out and then also just getting a purpose.

Speaker 2: 6:57

I think my son, seeing my son and knowing that I grew up and pretty much low income area right didn't have a lot I mentioned I'm on the podcast like Christmas not very much under the tree, right, Not much happening, going to the grocery store with a food stamp to buy, get groceries, like I. Just I didn't want that for my son, I didn't want that for me, I didn't want that for the people in my life and those just motivated me. I think those things were more motivating than feeling like a victim. And then I think the biggest thing I've said is just taking responsibility for the situation. Of course the market was bad. The market's been bad this year. If anybody says their business has been just like everything's been perfect, maybe there is some areas, but I would say that everybody I talked to has felt some of that this year in some capacity. So I think it's just taking responsibility.

Speaker 2: 7:49

And I just took responsibility and said what do I need to do to be better at running a business, understand a business and realize this is more than just being a plumber or an HVAC or electrician, right, this is really about being a entrepreneur, leader, manager, a marketing expert, operations person, all these things, and I just got to work on that. So I think the point is that is like I had to get a purpose, a purpose. Initial purpose was my son, myself proving to myself, proving to my son that we can have a better life. And then the next thing was getting a goal. And you may have heard me say this like I don't know where it came from, but as I read thinking grow rich, and I just started getting more curious and do stuff, I put a number out there $100 million and at this point I didn't even know $100 million existed companies existing in home service.

Speaker 2: 8:38

I wasn't like a member of Netstar, I didn't have anything right, I'm pretty much I'm broke, I'm just trying to get constructed, but I'm like I need to be a service business and I need to grow to $100 million. And I know if I put that out there big enough, it would force me to grow into it, right, if I was serious. Then I started telling people about it and saying out loud. So now it's like now I'm even owning this even more already. Look like an idiot for saying it, maybe to people, but I look like more of an idiot if I don't actually do anything to myself and to the people that I've said. I'm going to do this and that's how I moved forward. So that answers your question and I just have urgency underneath me. I was just like I can't live this way. I got it. I got to do something more.

Speaker 1: 9:18

So is it safe to assume? You said you live in a low income neighborhood. You didn't come up with money Lots of times. I find that when people do come up that way, lots of times they stay there. What I guess I'm looking for, what was it? You had a massive mindset shift and so where did you borrow some of those ideas? From somebody like who did you look to at the time with I don't even know if anybody like you said was even doing that much money a year who did you look to? Who helped inspire you during that time?

Speaker 2: 10:03

So I didn't know any companies, right, I had no relationship with anybody that had these giant companies or even knew. But I was never in service. I wasn't in service ever until I started this service because I was in construction, right, new construction and like commercial business, right, that's what we did. So I didn't know. It's weird to say, I don't really know what to say. You could say, somehow this number and this inspiration came from God and for intelligence, whatever you want to say, but I just knew I needed to do something different, right, I don't know how to explain it. I wish I could say it was this one thing or this one thing, this stuff.

Speaker 2: 10:42

And there used to be a TV show I was watching. I think it was CNN or CNBC or something, whatever one of the stations on there. They just have a guy did the big, called the show, called the Big Idea. Long time ago I think it was Downey Deutsch or something, maybe did it. And I remember flipping through that show one time and really watched one network over. Now I don't really even watch TV, but I remember flipping through and saw that show and was sitting there listening to it and was like, got to have this big idea for your business. You got to have this thing and I think something there click with me too, just watching a couple of episodes of that show here or there and start saying, okay, what is the big idea for me at home, like for this service? What could I do? I think there's something there that may have given me a little piece of we really want to go deep here.

Speaker 2: 11:29

I don't think I've ever really hit that, but reflecting in the moment right now, and I think that made me start thinking, okay, what do I need to do differently?

Speaker 2: 11:35

And that's where I went out and started trying to look for what's new in the space, what's innovative. And that's where I went out and found Green Plumbers at Australia and got online and started reading about water conservation and energy and water sense and tankless more. I was doing tankless and new construction, but it wasn't a big thing, and so I went there and then I started digging it and then I started to think, well, what could I do to read brand of business that would look into the future? That if I went and lined it up and I looked at a rotor-router or Mr Router nothing against those companies I was just saying, like, what if I was looking to 10 years, 20 years from now, and I went online or I went somewhere, what would make me stand out besides Jim's plumbing, mr Router or Rotary, because that's all you ever saw is the people's name or some similar name iteration. And then that's where it came up with Ecoplumbers.

Speaker 1: 12:25

Makes sense, Makes total sense. So you learned stuff from I forgot who you just said, somebody in Australia. Are you familiar with Alan Ferguson? I would imagine you would be.

Speaker 2: 12:39

I don't know if I can tell you that name resonates with me directly, but maybe across somewhere. Somehow I just knew that I read online that Australia was going through droughts and that one of the strategies they took was to create a better relationship with the plumbing contractors. And they created an organization called Green Plumbers and then started talking to the plumbing contractors about water conservation, water savings, water stuff, and that inspired me to an area to start thinking OK, well, here's a new category. Instead of just putting pipes in and fixing things, we could offer something that was innovative. And that's what we did and that's where I started moving towards. It got me thinking.

Speaker 2: 13:15

So when you say I don't know if I ever people ask me well, who did you look up to? Is there some iconic business person or something? No, I didn't, because I didn't know any of those people. I didn't live in an area where people were talking about that shit. Right, like I'm listening to, like Biggie Smalls, juicy in Tupac, like that's my inspiration, right, like I'm listening to that song, like those guys like rapping things and talking about stuff, right, that's where my level was at. But also my mom was always. My mom worked multiple jobs. She worked hard she. She had a good spirit, like she wanted to do more. She just wasn't able to find her way there and I think that did resonate across to me over time.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, 100 percent. So let's go back for a second. I know 2008 was a large portion of why you right Well, why you went bankrupt, but was there anything that you can pinpoint? You said you were new construction, so were you just? You had a lot of bids out that just didn't get paid, or what happened? Like what was the breaking point there?

Speaker 2: 14:34

A couple of things. One is one we really didn't understand cash flow, right. So I understand a cash flow statement, maybe, right, and and just financials in general. Like we saw money come in, we bid the jobs. A lot of them were basically hey, this is what we pay, especially when you're talking about production homes, but Syntax Homes I don't know if you know what Syntax Homes are, but they, I think they end up being bought up by Polkty at some point later on. But Syntax Homes was one of our biggest accounts and they basically said hey, with the housing market and what's happening, we're not building anymore, we're not going to build any more house, we're going to sell our land off and we're going to move on from here. And and then also, at the same time, we were struggling, we had been transparent with them about hey, we're not getting up falling because volume's slowing down, right, and we're starting to run into some cash flow areas. And then, basically, they just end up pulling the plug on us. And then, since they went out, and then Dominion Homes was here, which was a contract of ours too, and they just said basically, hey, we don't have any more homes.

Speaker 2: 15:35

So at this point there was nowhere to flex to right, because there was no new, there was not enough work to fill the voids of these construction jobs that were just housing jobs that's just going away. And we fought and tried. It wasn't like we were this like well, all right, fold up and we fought, we tried to figure out, we tried to get jobs, tried to move things around, had to let some people go, tried to do this, tried to do that and eventually, basically, we got forced into it. At one point, our vendors at Ferguson we were buying from Ferguson and Ferguson basically was like there's no choice here. We got to get it done, you got to go because we need to clean this up and move on right To, and so that's what happened. So what?

Speaker 1: 16:19

was it they like?

Speaker 2: 16:21

And I'd say I want to make sure I do. This is like I'm not blaming the economy, I'm blaming myself because we had so many eggs in one basket for a contract, right, we depended on one stream of construction work mostly, which was Residential home was our main volume of work, and we didn't really, we didn't own a business. We just didn't understand a business. We didn't understand financials probably the real way, right, we're a bunch of my buddy and I were just some kids that grew up doing plumbing and give us a little money and we thought we knew what we were doing, right, and we didn't. We just didn't understand business. We didn't understand P&L, we didn't understand cash flow statements. We just didn't really understand. We knew enough to be dangerous to grow the business and, frankly, it probably is the best thing that probably ever happened.

Speaker 2: 17:12

Truthfully, it made me reset, reinvent myself, learn more and get to work. So I take it as a blessing. I take it as an opportunity to say there's lots of people that made it through the recession. Right, a lot of people have made it through the recession. There's businesses that made it. There's people that made it.

Speaker 2: 17:29

There's companies that made it so, like you can't just blame the recession here, like got to blame yourself because a lot of people have made it, just like now, right, like a lot of people are going to make it and a lot of people aren't going to make it. So it depends on what we do, how we operate, what skills do you need to learn and do stuff? So at the moment I took full responsibility and said this business failed, not because Syntex did this or the recession happened. These things, yeah, those are things that may have been circumstances, but at the end of the day, the business failed because we weren't smart enough of what to do, how to do, and didn't have the experience. And I need to get out of it. So I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 1: 18:07

Totally so. As I say, I could see real easily how someone could get called Like Syntex. You get this agreement with them, things start going really well and you think this is never going to change. That's the thought pattern. Right, we've got this account is doing great, so how do you? What was that day like when they said, like we're pulling the plug on because that was your largest account, I assume, right?

Speaker 2: 18:39

Yeah, yeah, they brought us into their building. We sat down and met with them and they said, hey, this is what's happening. We're pulling the plug on some of the stuff. We're going to start doing this. At the same time, like we know that you guys are having some issues too, and we're going to move on too out of our out of the market over here. And that was the conversation. It was pretty quick, right, because I get terminated yeah, right, the same thing. And walking out of that building and walking in the lot and saying, shit, what are we going to do? They're like you're going to finish off what we have. We have houses, we have contracts under things that you're building up. Some in underground, some in rough, some in finished right Are happening. We're going to do those. And they're basically saying we're not, they're not going to move forward, they're going to start clearing out some of the land and some stuff going on. And that was the conversation.

Speaker 1: 19:31

Yeah, so, but cash flow stopped. So if you had all this other work you had to finish up. How'd you manage that?

Speaker 2: 19:39

Right, well, we were able to get. We tried to do the best we could. Eventually it just fell off. Right Like we couldn't, because we had to go to bankruptcy, because there was definitely houses that were in some cycle that didn't get done. Right Like there's nothing I can do. There's nothing we could do about it.

Speaker 1: 19:53

No.

Speaker 2: 19:55

But yeah, no, it was a rough day walking out of there and saying, and shit, here we are, like, what are we going to do? And thinking, okay, well, we still have this vendor and that one and what are we going to do here? But this was the majority of our business and people have ever had that feel like I'd just be careful to count on that. There's good vendors that last and build and do stuff that just would always be watching out how much you're depending on one source for your business in general, right, and people could say, well, today, like, you're depending on replacement business and service business, yeah, but I'm not depending on one person, one business, right. Multiple customers at multiple different stages that need things over time. So it's not really one source, right. If we have a person that doesn't pay a $10,000 job, you know we have multiple other jobs, we have jobs going on, right. Or a $400 ticket, right. Like we're not getting caught up on the fact that we have vendors that drag us out in 90, 120 days, or sometimes we had vendors that didn't end up paying all their bill and there's not much you could do right. So just watching the idea of like, how much you have all in one area, because that was the downfall, and that was a big downfall to us, because, again, that's not being smart.

Speaker 2: 21:09

I grew up in a time in construction where I felt like they were going to build houses forever, like houses were never going to stop. It was just especially in Central Ohio. Central Ohio was booming, it's just like neighborhoods and neighborhoods, so I didn't see anything different. Why would I ever think anything different? Because I'd never lived through anything else and I sure didn't study. You know the economy by any means.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Nothing about the economy, Right? Well, and now you're in a. I would argue that you diversified into a recession proof. Like you said, you're right, people don't have to build houses. They don't have to build houses. But I live in a house and my plumbing is going to break at some point and I'm going to have to call someone to fix it, Right? So this sort of recession proof to an agree? No, it is what it is.

Speaker 2: 21:59

Yeah, it is. I saw that Like when I was sitting in bankrupt, sitting on my mom's house. I saw service trucks on the road going around right and started thinking, well, these guys doing service, what's going on there? So I shared earlier, trying to look for that next evolution of what. How can I compete in that space without being the same into the future?

Speaker 1: 22:21

And yeah, that was it.

Speaker 2: 22:22

It's like that's what I need to do. I need to control my own destiny. I need to have my own brand. I need to be able to flex during times and in a recession, yeah, people are still going to need things done. I would call it pretty recession proof. Maybe people aren't going to do replacement as much or bigger projects. They're lower average sale but you're still in a demand driven business that people are going to need done right, not want need right. So I think when you think about businesses like what do people need versus want right, because most of the time you're buying a new house, not so much because you need it Maybe you might because you've outgrown it with your family but most times because you want a new house, you want something new right, like you need your plumbing to work, you need your AC first to work, you need your electrical to work right and you're going to get those things to work. So I think sometimes the business that you're in decides whether it's a need or want business.

Speaker 1: 23:14

Yeah, I agree with you. So what is this outside perspective here? A lot of companies depend on especially HVAC companies, depend on selling a new system, like their model, especially over the last three years is replacement. Well, now people are not replacing as much as they're repairing. I don't know, and I don't know the figures on that. I don't know what the ratio is, but I do know for sure repairs up. So how do you make that and I don't know, it doesn't sound like that you depend on replacement. It seems like you're repair and replacement. So for a company out there that may be listening to this that is used to selling just new systems that's how they've trained their people, and there's a lot of training out there that do just train to sell new systems how do you pivot from that? Obviously, you need to start repairing, but a lot of these guys think they don't have the repair mindset because they've been trained so hard on how to just convert people to a new system. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 24:25

Yeah. So I'll speak with HVAC if that's the best I can. I'm a plumber, right so. But we do have a large business and a large HVAC line these days. We've only really been in HVAC for two years, so don't have a ton of previous history on.

Speaker 2: 24:43

It Seems like we pretty much started HVAC when replacement is not as best. So I will say as a plumber, I was always joking with some of my HVAC buddies like all you're selling is boxes. This should be pretty easy, but at the same time it's not. And I actually think in hindsight, starting HVAC in a time where this is not as easy to sell replacement for, say, or only focus on replacement will probably make us better, because now we understand how to operate and we're not just living off that. I think it's again just going down and start saying, ok, what are the other options that people will do that want in their home versus need? Or maybe there is still wants, they just don't want to spend all the money on a whole brand new system. So there's always air quality and maybe there's an opportunity to realign the duct systems. There's things that you can offer and do that still add value and sale to the customer. So I think I was just finding out which ones of those are you not offering and can stack those in on your maintenance calls right now or your demand calls that are not only all about replacement of a system. And if you could do that I think you'll weather the storm and the replacement will find itself back, because we all know there's a lot of systems that pulled ahead during COVID and then on top of that now we have just recessional things that are out there, people being a consumer buying not the best it could be, even though there's been some decent information recently that says that maybe we're OK and a little level. But I think we live on the ground of it, so we feel and know because we're actually in the houses. So I think home service does have a really close relationship to what's happening, faster than some of the areas of the market.

Speaker 2: 26:33

But I think it's just finding those value propositions and adding in service. I don't say when I say service lies, maybe offerings that you just have not been doing, that aren't reinventing your whole entire business. It's not like all of a sudden I'm going to go off and sell some other trade line out of nowhere that is not within the same service line. So if you're not doing that, I would find ways to do that, and those are things that we've been looking at and have been able anymore. Even we don't really do duck cleaning right Like now. Duck cleaning just ways to create revenue streams that can help people to add value to our technicians and customers that are not all about just buy a brand new system for 12 to $18,000. Because there's a lot of dependence on that. The language is always better. If you don't sell replacements, you don't own an HVAC business, right?

Speaker 1: 27:22

Right, yeah, 100%. So how hard was it for you as a plumber, switching over or opening up the HVAC side of the business. How much of a struggle has that been.

Speaker 2: 27:42

I think the idea is we're fortunate, we have a very big customer base. We have some resources. We've grown a very large company business that had resources. I want to make sure I have that baseline too. We're able to weather some of the financial part of it by doing that because we have those resources. We have a big sewer line business to sewer digging, excavation business. Those things have helped us and we have customers that we could leap that. We're already repeat customers and base.

Speaker 2: 28:15

But, that being said, it's still just not easy. I would. For years I didn't want to start anything because I always wanted to have ideas like you got to earn the right to start another trade. What I've seen in my years at Nextar and around is people start adding all three trades before they've even got one trade figured out or even having a market share to earn it add another trade. They just think, oh, but I had another trade, we'll make more money. It's like, well, each trade is another level of complexity, distraction, and every time you add a new trade, everybody in your team starts looking at that trade more than the other. Right, it's just natural. So I would say make sure that you feel that you have the trade that you are doing figured out really well. You understand the market penetration you have, like, do you own 5, 10, 15% of your market already in the trade you're doing already? And if you don't, I would recommend that you probably focus on doing that trade first. And that was my initial approach. I was like let's get our plumbing trade, let's own it, let's focus there and own as much of the market. That being said, after that we decided to do horizontal and vertical growth all at one time. So that made everything complicated for sure.

Speaker 2: 29:30

So adding the age back in hasn't been we're a demand plumbing driven business. So, and we realized that we tried to run age back Like a plan, a plumbing to demand business, and it's not right. We needed to get memberships. We weren't really a membership driven business, so we had to get memberships figured out. Understand how to sell memberships. Maybe people call it tune ups, we call it clean and check. Right, understand a clean and check, setting up those maintenance calls. Understanding that the labor burdens For service tech and maintenance are significantly higher. Again, this whole thing, right, if you know sounding replacement. You're going around on members and really shifting that to the idea of, like, how is an H back business operate while adapting some of our successes and plumbing, but it does not run the exact same way as a demand Plumbing business.

Speaker 2: 30:20

So I think that was the biggest hurdle for us. We wanted to treat age back like a demand plumbing business. Even when people call in and say something's up with my AC, we would send like a demand guy over it and then have them try to basically be the service tech, sell and do it all and get invited like comfort advisor situation, right Like. So there's this opportunity there and just learning that business line to have some friends that is able to lean on and learn going into it. So that also helped. But it's been a lesson learned then. Then interesting, but it's exciting and I think between our organic growth and acquisition we're still ended up 2 years later doing Round. That's about 14, 15 million and 2 years and age back. So it's, when I say that in a way, like we stumbled forward pretty ugly but it's still. A lot of people would be very happy to have that number as their age back business and we are too.

Speaker 1: 31:18

But so I think the biggest thing I think I heard you say there's really you got a customer base that trust you and it's probably obviously it's a easier transition If you're going to add a trade on, If you've got a good customer base, because they're likely going to continue doing business with you in that 2nd trade.

Speaker 2: 31:40

Yeah, I think that's the time making sure that you have a strong enough base to support that trade line, because If you're doing plumbing first and then you want to go to age back I think that is like that Realize that you have to have a big enough base because the demand for Age back is not as high demand volume as is for plumbing right. Plumbing demand is happening all the time. So just making sure in that spot electrical is picking up, so we have electrical now too, but yeah, that was definitely a big part for us. And then just knowing when and make sure you have the right resources to do it Everybody's in different hours on another size of your market, how many people are available, like all these things may play into it. Make sure you really feel like you got the trade that you're doing in a good spot, because it's going to take a lot of your time and energy to start another trade.

Speaker 1: 32:27

Yeah, so how did you transition? Not transition, but how did you start to build the age back side from the plumbing base, like, in other words, when you're when one of your service techs would go out with a mention by the way, we do age back also now or how did you transition those conversations?

Speaker 2: 32:51

Yeah, we wanted our plumbers to Let the customers know, offered the membership. We did email campaigns, we did a complete rebrand of the business, right as the next year. Like, we rebranded the business not going to say rebrand still eco but To the new logo, new design, brought all three trades in under the name, create a new marketing material. So, like, that's still going on. We're only a year. Well, basically we're a year. We're a year into the new rebrand, right? So, and then just calling the base and then when people are booking plumbing calls, we offer to book an HVAC call at the same time. Right on the inbound calls, right, and then calling the base up that we had already.

Speaker 2: 33:33

We have members, but we didn't have members. Like age back volume of members, right, calling them up and say, hey, we added this to your membership At no additional cost. We want us to send out our people. So, all the people already members, we didn't say they were going to charge you more. Now to have our age back Is like we're going to actually not bring up our price for them and have them call, basically they're under a legacy contract, right, because they wanted them to help us build our age back business. Instead of calling back, say, hey, we got each back. Now Do you want the new membership? And it's going to cost you another $30 or something a month, or whatever people come up with on these things. Just call them and say, hey, we're offering this service now to you at no additional charge, would you like it? And if you don't have an age back provider, let us be it. And if you do, maybe give us a shot. And that's where we went.

Speaker 1: 34:23

That's the smartest thing you could have done. That makes complete sense. Why to add that membership on? Add the age back side on to the existing, not charge more money? Because most people don't do it that way. Most people think well, I have started the age back side, so now I need to double my price or I need to charge. Maybe it's 30 bucks a month or whatever the number is. But that really does start you off on the wrong foot. The way you did it was. There's no reason for anybody to say no, thanks, yeah well, that's what we saw.

Speaker 2: 35:02

I was like well, I think, the idea of giving more value versus calling a cell Right. So we call them up, remember it up now, and say, hey, we got an age back. Would you like for us to do it? But it's going to cost you $30 more a month or something, right? I'm just using random numbers. Yeah, maybe $10, whatever it is. So now you're asking them to pay more and for a service that they weren't even looking for, right? So it's like add the value Over time. If you need to raise membership prices, you have the right to do that over time, but I wouldn't come in that way. I would definitely come in the way we did and it worked. It's been working for us.

Speaker 1: 35:36

And my guess is when you make, when those who were, whoever was making those calls lots of times, or a good portion of those times. I'm glad you called. I am having this plumbing problem and I do need you to come out, Right?

Speaker 2: 35:51

Oh yeah, there's calls that were booked like that for sure. I think people don't mind, we don't mind our. I don't know if I would write where to use this minor base or customer base as much as we should, but I think about a very big opportunity for everyone in 2024, regardless of society, or 2024 is you need to be hitting your base harder than ever? Right, like that's. This is like the time, if you're not doing things, to call your base up. Talk to them, check in with them, find out how you can help them, creating offers that are meaningful to your customer base and reengaging with the people that have already done service with you. You're gonna feel the pain pretty bad.

Speaker 1: 36:36

But it's not always a sales. It's not always a sale email or text. It's right, and I don't know if that's how you do it. My guess is that you would. Sometimes people don't like to be sold to, right, people like to buy, but they don't like to be sold to. And so when you can add value to a great example like you, send a message out warning people about Brown Friday, right, that's a pretty common thing. Most people, at least in the industry for sure, know what Brown Friday is, but that's a value add of letting the customer know this could be a possibility. This could be something that's coming up that maybe they didn't know. You're not selling them anything, you're just saying hey, want to let you know what's going on. I want to let you know this could be a possibility.

Speaker 2: 37:30

Yeah, I think you know opportunity for us is in our social media area. Still, we do social media stuff, but educational selling, I guess, so you could call it. But I yeah, some people just want to be educated, like, teach them something. That's the first part, I think, of selling is to show up and educate your customer on it, and then hopefully they say, yeah, you know what, you educated me really well and I also think I trust you to be the person to do it. So, but then taking that time to do that and while also creating compelling offers that people want to buy from at the same time. So if you can maximize those together, you've got a pretty good winning formula. I wouldn't say we've got to figure it out, because we still got a lot of opportunity, but those are the things that we are looking at and keep trying to tweak and improve. And if somebody can pick one of those up and say I'm going to become the local expert in my trade line and I'm going to put out content to my customer base and to the people around in the market and show them that I'm educating them, Then you'll, you should, win your area. You should, as long as you're giving content that's valuable and not being fearful. What I've seen, too, is we've done this before too. I've had my plumbers do this to me before, and we've heard this language from other people.

Speaker 2: 38:45

People say, well, if I tell people how to do it all, then how am I going to make any money? It's like well, just because you tell people how to do something doesn't mean they still don't want to hire somebody to do it. That's right, like that happens all the time in every walk of life. Right, like a lot of things that you could tell people how to do that do not want to do it. Right, so that fear is just something you got to put off the side. And if you do teach somebody at name of doing themselves, and okay, that's just maybe what happened, but not teaching people and not putting content out or not doing things that educated people is worse plan than that, because you're fearful of giving away the information, because you don't think you're going to make money. Like that model doesn't work in my, in my personal opinion Right. Again, this is a personal opinion and personal experience. I don't want to speak for other people, but I think you need to do that. So, to your point. There's like great content, share things.

Speaker 2: 39:41

When you go to the house, don't be scared to tell people how to fix things so they understand, because they also proves that you're an expert. And then from there, go buy from Right, you still buy stuff. I buy stuff still. I read books on stuff, like there's a lot of knowledge I know. And then I'm like I'm going to buy this seminar, I'm going to go to this seminar Right, I'm still paying to go to seminars for things. Sometimes I'm going to go pay to talk to people, like we all, we're all still doing it and there's a lot of knowledge free online. I don't know what you people. Pretty much everything you need is all right here on your phone these days anyways, but you still pay for stuff, right?

Speaker 1: 40:18

Yeah, 100%. That's right. Yeah, exactly. You can tell people how to do stuff all day long. That doesn't mean they're going to do it or know how to do it or they feel like doing it Right, but I know I totally agree with you. So how are you guys have you? Ai is a big conversation. I've got my second business is a AI company. What are you guys doing with AI right now? Are you doing what? Are you finding that has been beneficial, or you find anything?

Speaker 2: 40:47

I mean, ai has really got real hot recently, right, like probably in the last six months more than ever. Feels like everybody's talking about AI. Yeah, we use chat GTP for stuff. We have them for a while, we use it to I use it to for certain things, bounce off. You send type stuff in, get information back. So he was talking about that type of. They don't call that entry level AI at this point, right, but still people aren't using it like great tool, great resource. You can put any pretty much anything in it. You can put sheet, you can put your PNL downloaded. It'll literally write a story for you If you don't know how to tell a story about your numbers.

Speaker 2: 41:33

Chubby TP will tell you how to tell your team a story about your numbers, like it's. If you're not a good communicator or not able to say how do I articulate this, take it downloaded into it. It'll literally say this is what it is with within content of what, how, other information you give it. So I think in those areas great opportunity we use a real voice. Oh, do you? I in the field? Yeah, so we've been on real voice for a while. We have the real voice In home Basically records the call and then Translate it out for you so you can understand.

Speaker 1: 42:12

Who do you have coaching on that, like I, like I know Sebastian, I know that process, but also know that it's kind of like service Titan or whoever you probably are on service, like whoever they record the CSR calls, but guess what? Very rarely do people go back and listen to them, which it thinks crazy. I understand it's time consuming 100%, but somebody's got to go back and listen to those technician calls. Do you have somebody specifically that does that? Or how do you do that?

Speaker 2: 42:40

Yeah. So we had our sales manager doing it when we went out the gate with it, right, the salesman, I looked at him. I would listen to him too, just because I was curious about it. So, sales manager, you have to have somebody committed to it. I would say we use it, got hot, like most things, that kind of lost traction and how we're rebuilding traction right. To be honest, like it's those things, like everybody wants it, it's all exciting, everybody's all in on it and then it starts to lose some of it and it's not because the product doesn't work, because the product is great. It tells you everything you need to know.

Speaker 2: 43:11

We learned a lot of things about people were saying in the house, not saying doing you can put scripts in there that brought up finance. They didn't bring up finance. Like there's a lot of opportunity in there. It's just people having to discipline the stable stuff right, especially in the world where it's just right. Now it just feels like everybody's getting hit with so many new products, so many new offerings and then trying to implement too many things all at one time, which we've been, which we've done right at times. Right, because there's so much new stuff and so you want to beta testing. So I think it's good to to be.

Speaker 2: 43:41

Is this it? Maybe I don't go there. Let me try this product, let me try that. Let me see if AI works for me here and not here, like you just got to find which one it is for you. And two point, like service, yeah, we've been on service. I think almost 10 years now nine, 10 years. So we've been on very beginning. Our was my sales rep, so and same thing there right Is integrating that software we had to build in a process that you listen to the calls.

Speaker 2: 44:09

So all of it just coming down to discipline, getting the right people, getting engagement and realizing what AI tools do you want. And if you're not really ready for AI, don't chase it. I would say to be careful. You're not just chasing it and distracting you from the fundamentals of your business, but I also think be careful that you're not paying attention to it, because it's going to change A lot of our culture, which already has. It was going to change a lot of our industry and many industries. So you should be informed and you should know what's going on, but it's also not going to change the fact that people are going to have to show up and do the work in the house Right.

Speaker 2: 44:45

So realize it, train the people how to do the work. Those tools, those resources find. How do you use AI resources to help support people? First, maybe, and then think about, maybe, as you move along, how AI may replace certain parts of workforce that can be supported in the right way. I'm never advocate for saying have to replace people, but you also better be aware, because if you're growing a business and you're not, and people are able to have AI in places to support or replace and brings down their operating ability, they're going to be able to move faster than you and you're going to struggle to compete. Yeah, 100%, I don't know that answered your question there, but yeah, totally.

Speaker 2: 45:34

We are doing. There's other things that we are doing. I'm just with AI right now. We've been using AI and we use smart. We use this like the AI style. Or they see, yeah, right, hinter into the systems for description, made it early this year maybe and Starting to get that structure in place, and I don't know if I call that AI. But there's again home monitoring and areas to have more resources. We reduce truck rolls, etc. Right.

Speaker 1: 46:31

That's right. Yeah, dude, I think it makes complete shift. So you, you're working on, you're working on a book right now, right? I?

Speaker 2: 46:44

Am. I know if I had some buddies that have wrote some really great books. Hey, yeah, I think you said you had Chad. Chad was on here the other day. Chad had is on a second book, seeing him Tommy Two books, kind of. I got a little section in his last book which was great to be recognized by him.

Speaker 2: 47:02

Great guy, great friends or eight. So and just the industry across, just the share story. And, yeah, I'm excited about the opportunity to share our story, my story, hopefully educate people about the process I went through to get to where we're going and hope to have that out by the beginning of 2025 as we Hopefully finish out. My decade goal that I set out for myself a decade ago, wrote down Actually on paper even before then told you guys my number, my big number was to get to a hundred million. So 2025 was the deadline. I wrote down ten years ago and said I need to do this by 2025 and I didn't know anything about acquisitions and stuff is that we might get there between before that with that type of stuff. But we're fortunate to do that. But, yeah, I want to just share the story, share my stuff and Experiences and hopefully give people some level of a playbook and inspiration that you can overcome anything in the trades or anywhere and make a better life for yourself and the people that work for you.

Speaker 1: 48:08

Yeah, dude, you started out in definitely in a negative place for sure. Like it's pretty impressive that you've been able to do to pull yourself out of that mess that you were in. And I agree with you. You mentioned this earlier. You said I think that made me, you said I'm grateful for it and I think it's probably helped me to be successful today, and I agree with that. I don't think if I hadn't gone through some of the harder times that I've gone through in my life with getting sober or losing businesses and all those things made me a better person for sure.

Speaker 2: 48:51

Yeah, I think overcoming diversity, challenges or whatever you want to use it, is important in the growth of people Men, women, all walks of life like they're important to our personal growth.

Speaker 2: 49:03

Life is a journey of growing and learning and reinventing ourselves, right, like, if you want to, without those childhood struggles, all these things like, and you don't know how to overcome things.

Speaker 2: 49:17

If you don't know how to overcome things like, life's a big problem, it always is, it always will be, it's never going away and it's always just a big problem out in front of you. And if you look at all those problems as opportunities, then things get different, right, and I think, as you look at it, the people, as I think about it, as I move along my journey in life and things I've read and done, is, like most successful people are getting paid the most because they're the best at solving the biggest problems. Right, and that's what it's about, even in home service, like how can you solve your customers' problems better, faster than anybody else? Like that's, and you'll grow because of that. And same thing, overcoming your own personal challenges If you're able to overcome those faster, better, have insight and do those, that you'll grow as a person. So all of those opportunities and they're never going to go away Right. There's always going to be things that you need to get better at, especially if you want to grow your business, grow your bandwidth, whatever it may be.

Speaker 1: 50:13

Yeah, I agree, I do have one more last question. It may not be the last question, but I do have one more question I meant to ask you earlier. So do you? Because I don't know if you do this or not, but do you all use Zoom to close, like in your age fact side, or the plumbing side, like a lot of people? Chad is a great example. He's moved to. Most of his sales people are, I don't know. He didn't call it call by call now, but he calls it something else. But you get what I'm asking. Do you all use that?

Speaker 2: 50:49

So we were calling him success coaches is what our language was to. But this, basically the call by call. Right, it's like call by call was the hot thing. Now it's a I right. So it's all all kind of chasing these fundamental, these things. So, yeah, we do some call by call. We've been doing in plumbing for a while with our plumbing department. We are not doing virtual close like the assume as Chad is. I know Chad's doing it. We learned some of it from Ken Goodrich was doing a lot of it over at get all, so went out and visited him before to set of that.

Speaker 2: 51:26

Joe Kassar teaches some of those things right. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there again to depending what, where do you want to go, what kind of what? How do you want to operate the business? And from a speed aspect, again, speed is important and if you can figure out a way to do that and get better at it, yeah, I would say we're not good at it the way we should be. So we got a lot of opportunity to learn how to use that, that virtual closing, as an opportunity for us to get better.

Speaker 2: 51:56

Right now we're still sending comfort advisors out For the most part. Yes, we still have some inside sales people that help support, close, do stuff, but we're trying to balance the idea about using technology and areas while also still creating Real life experiences, and I don't know if we I can't tell you that we have that figured out at the moment, but we'll keep moving forward. As I said, big problem problems are there. So trying to balance those 2 areas and realizing the audience too, I think is important, as you think about, like I don't know how deep people get into the marketing and demographics and how who their customer is and how to relate to that. Like for us, we're really thinking about where is this technology really lay to be? Advanced scenarios and then where the customers that we need to come to them not always make them come to us, type of thing. So I think that's important to understand.

Speaker 1: 52:53

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I just I understand it from an how the whatever you recall it the virtual selling would work With age back seems pretty like that makes sense to me. But with plumbing I don't know that I can wrap my head around, because just a different, it's just a little bit different product, right? You're not necessarily offering a bunch of new systems. I guess you're offering Sometimes you are, but plumbing just different, right. So I would imagine it would be a little bit more of a challenge in that, in plumbing that it would be H back.

Speaker 2: 53:28

Yeah, from what I gather again, we're not doing H back, we've been doing plumbing. I guess when we use call by call and plumbing, guys are out there like, hey, how can you make sure I'm writing these options up for right, kind of like a service manager. Hey, mrs Jones is here. She has some questions. Can you help me answer more? Hey, miss Jones thinks Mr Mr Jones might not be thinking the prices wherever right. So let me get on there.

Speaker 2: 53:51

The guy gets on the call and talks with the customer. Try to understand where they are Right. Maybe there's a bigger plumbing project that may need some support for financing. Yeah, the age back, I can understand more of we dialing because once we get to this point, there's equipment, it's financing. Most of this stuff is, hey, I know the product, I know what it is, I can understand what you're selling me. Right, there's a lot of parts and pieces. So, but again, they all can come together and do that if you can just find the right way to do it. But I would say that from what I've gathered and heard again I'm not doing it there that the age back virtual sale strategy seems to be the most productive and the one that can actually is more scalable than I've been offered from plumbing and electrical from other places.

Speaker 1: 54:37

That's what I would think. Yeah, that's definitely what I would think, for sure. So well, look, this has been a great conversation. I think we went all over the place and talked about a lot of different things and, aaron, I really appreciate you spending the time with me today to tell the audience about your story, and they may or may not have heard of you, but now they obviously will have heard of you. I really appreciate the time that we spent today. I really do. Where, if people want to find you? Where's the best way to do that?

Speaker 2: 55:13

Aaron at eco plumberscom and if people email me from there, I get back to you. Some email I'll get back to you. There's something I can't get back to you, I usually send it over to somebody on our team that can help answer some questions. People looking for stuff for plumbing Maybe we're going to be doing some onsite visits, setting up some countertimes. People want to come out and see the shop. We got a couple of time set up in 2024. So people want to come out visit, see what we do, see our school. And then big thing people want to always come see is our plumbing school which we're also building HVAC out and electrical in. We've graduated already like 120 plumbers now, I think, through our school program. So those opportunities there. So just Aaron at eco plumberscom Easy. I do have another one that is our new domain, but that's the easiest one for people to remember because those people know us from the eco plumber name. Yeah, that makes it.

Speaker 2: 56:11

Thanks for having me, man. It was great. It was good to get in some operational talk, so I enjoyed that. Hopefully people picked up some things that they're doing or supporting what they're doing, or maybe some new thoughts. So appreciate the give me a time to get on here and share like one of my goals is just to get out in the industry and share my experience. The trade saved my life. They really did give me an opportunity, gave me a place and I hope other people inspire to make the trades great, keep them going and build, build great businesses or become better at just your niche or what you do and do that right, be really great at that. So I appreciate the opportunity to hopefully inspire somebody today. Thanks, aaron, appreciate it, my friend.